Do you know the messages you're sending?

I recently met a manager, “Ingrid,” who had alienated her entire team. Ingrid was a kind person but she had facial expressions that upset and agitated others. When she was thinking her face became a blank stare. This stare seemed like an angry glare to her staff. Soon, every attempt at communication was colored by mistrust and assumptions. Her staff saw hostile motives in Ingrid’s every action. Meanwhile, Ingrid felt her team’s resistance and soon her facial expressions grew even sterner.

Are you aware of the messages your sending to others? Do you find that other people often misinterpret your words or moods?

Dear Amy, Nonverbals and Emotional Intelligence

I appreciated reading this story from today's Chicago Tribune.

Dear Amy: A mom who wrote to you was concerned about her teenage daughter being sarcastic and unpleasant, and losing friends.
My daughter also has issues relating to her peers in a way that isn't sarcastic. She is also very straightforward, even if it's not always nice.
We had been working with her on this, but she was resisting. She thought she didn't need to change.
Her counselor suggested that we videotape her and let her see it.
She was relaying a story from school with us, and we had her say it again on tape. When we showed it to her, she was shocked. She couldn't believe how her face looked and how she sounded. We are now having a much easier time working with her on reframing her statements.
Sometimes a picture (or video) is worth a thousand arguments.
— Relieved Mom

Dear Relieved: People who have trouble reading social cues often need training to learn this important skill. Viewing photos or video of other people's facial expressions can actually teach recognition.
Your daughter's therapist had a great idea — to show your daughter her own face.

Dreaming of a Happier Workplace

I had a strange dream this morning. I was helping a new employee who had just been hired in our department. We worked comfortably together but then, at the end of the workday (as can happen in dreams), I suddenly realized that this new worker was actually a former colleague. How did I not recognize her?

In the past my former co-worker, “Cathy,” had caused great disruption and chaos in our department. She had felt like an adversary to many of us. But since I had no recollection of this in my dream, we began our “first” day at work together with ease and collegiality. My dream-state-temporary-amnesia allowed me to treat Cathy with warmth. If I had recognized her, our interaction would have been much different.

How many conflicts could be averted if we had selective amnesia with our rivals or foes? Our conversations would then be free of the tiny microexpressions and unconscious vocal tones that send out defensive messages (despite our best intentions). The problem is, our brain scrutinizes our environment for threats and then sears these threat-memories deep into our mind-- for our protection. Our brain doesn’t want us to have amnesia precisely because we would then be more vulnerable to dangers around us.

Emotional Intelligence theories and techniques help us understand our brain’s design. We can then, depending on our circumstances, work to utilize or circumvent our evolutionary programming.

While we can never have complete amnesia about past events, we can at least be conscious of our feelings. These can give us a clue to the unconscious signals we are probably sending. That is why self-fulfilling prophecies work. If I come into a conversation anticipating the worst--my expectations are likely to be fulfilled because of the signals I’ve sent.

Even if we can’t control our unconscious nonverbal behaviors, we can try to compensate for them. If I were to meet with Cathy today, I could emphasize listening, eye contact, smiles, and a gentle tone of voice to counteract other signals I may inadvertently send. Then we might have the same easy relating that we had in my dream.

Destructive patterns of interacting are very hard to change since both parties become stuck in patterns of aggressive or defensive signals. Still, knowing our feelings can help us break these patterns and create new exchanges with our coworkers.